


uncontrollable

by thistidalwave



Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 14:21:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thistidalwave/pseuds/thistidalwave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rule 63 AU. Nick is the co-owner of a small record shop, and Harry is the new uni student they just hired. Nick wants to die all the time because Harry Styles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	uncontrollable

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Calley and Becca for their invaluable help in getting this written, and to Sally magog83 for the fabulous britpick. :D
> 
> There's also a [mix for this fic](http://8tracks.com/thistidalwave/uncontrollable).
> 
> Note that Nick and Harry are cisgirls. :)

Nick is dicking around on Facebook on the computer at the front desk of the record shop when the tiny bells on top of the door jingle, signalling someone’s arrival. Nick hates those bells, always has, but Matt insisted they were required for any quaint shop, and Fiona had agreed, so Nick is forced to put up with them. She doesn’t see why their record shop has to be _quaint_ , but there it is. 

Anyway, it’s a Tuesday morning in September. Nick is on Facebook instead of checking over the last of the inventory they’ve been doing for the past two weeks. The shop is (not) quaint, and Nick is nodding along to the new Arctic Monkeys album on the overhead speakers. The bells on top of the door jingling are harshing her vibe. Who needs to buy music this early in the morning, anyway? 

Nick finally drags her eyes away from the serious(ly negligible) intrigue of her newsfeed. She might make an audible noise, but if anyone asks, she was singing along. 

It’s just, apparently hot girls like to wander into record shops at arse o’clock in the morning and stand awkwardly in the middle of the indie section. Nick feels dirty just _looking_ at this girl, but she can’t stop. God, she’s probably like twelve years old. Nick is going to go to jail for a million years. Oh no, she’s pushing back her hair, it’s all stupid curls falling straight back into her face, and oh, she has tattoos. Maybe she’s not actually jailbait. Maybe just almost. 

The bells jingle again, and this time a young man walks through, looking mildly nervous and very muscular. He’s the kind of good looking that makes Nick want to find Aimee and have a good gossip about things like messing up perfect hair and fucking against walls, even though she really isn’t actually into the whole dick thing. Aimee is, which is the part that makes the conversation fun. 

Attractive young man seems to know attractive young lady, because he goes over to her and says hello. Nick wants to separate them immediately. They are too much too close together. 

“Well, they’re very prompt,” Matt says from behind Nick. Nick nearly falls off her stool. 

“Don’t _scare_ me like that!” Nick says, holding a hand to her chest. She frowns. “Wait, what do you mean, prompt?”

Matt raises his eyebrows at her. “We’re interviewing for new part-time workers today, remember?”

Nick did not remember that. She should probably work on retaining the things she learns at staff meetings. 

“See,” Matt says, pursing his lips and shaking his head, “ _this_ is why we don’t let you do the interviews.”

Nick pouts purely on principle. “I’m a good judge of character.”

“Need I remind you about the fiasco of 2011?” Matt asks. 

Nick cringes. “No, let’s just not talk about that.” She still has nightmares about disorganized LPs and hours on the phone to IT support trying to fix the computer. (They’d had to get a new one.)

Matt looks entirely too smug. Matt often looks entirely too smug. It’s a wonder that Nick ever put up with him long enough to start a business together. 

“Hi, I’m Harry Styles?” Oh dear. How did the hottie get over here without Nick noticing. This is all Matt’s fault, and while she’s at it, Nick is going to blame him for the fact that the hottie has a voice like dripping honey.

“Are you sure?” Nick asks. 

Harry looks amused. “Yes,” she says. “I’m Harry Styles.”

“That’s great,” Matt says. “Do you want to follow me and we can get this interview started?”

“Sure,” Harry says agreeably, smiling at Nick instead of Matt, and Nick turns back to the computer. She will not be affected. She will not look at Harry’s arse retreating into the backroom with Matt. It’s probably a very nice arse. Still, Nick will not look at it. 

There’s awkward shuffling in front of the counter, and Nick turns to see the attractive young man straightening the cup of pens that’s sitting next to the cash register. “Who are you then?” Nick asks.

“Oh, er, Liam Payne,” he says, sticking out a hand. Nick shakes it. Nice grip. Her father would approve. She doesn’t really care about a handshake. 

“Are you going to be interviewing me?” Liam asks, and Nick laughs. 

“No, love, I’m not trusted anymore. That’s all Finchy’s territory. Don’t worry, though, he’s easy to please. Just bat your eyelashes and act like you’re more competent than I am and he’ll love you.” 

“Oh,” Liam says. “Are you, um. Are you particularly competent?”

“Yes,” Nick says. She feels competent today, anyway. She’s totally going to get all the inventory stuff sorted and everything. “I am very competent.”

Liam looks slightly terrified. Nick counts it as a win. 

-

Later that day, when Matt’s finished all the interviews and is stapling the notes he took to the respective applicant’s CV, Nick picks up Harry Styles’ little bundle of papers and says, “Oooh, look, very qualified. We should hire this one!”

Matt takes it from her, looks at it, looks back at Nick, shakes his head disapprovingly, and tucks the papers into his folder.

They have a meeting after the shop closes that day though, and they do decide to hire Harry, as well as Liam. Matt likes an overly punctual person, and he’s written _charming_ in his notes for both of them. Nick’s never going to let him live that one down, and she’s confident that Fiona and LMC will back her up on this. 

“Please don’t shag the new employees,” Fiona says instead of laughing at Matt with Nick. Nick feels the betrayal deep in her very soul. “It’ll just be a huge bother, and no one wants to deal with you breaking hearts left and right.”

“I’m not going to break anyone’s heart!” Nick protests. 

Nobody looks like they believe her. (Well, Fiona and Matt look like they don’t believe her. LMC is on her phone, but that’s not an excuse.) She’s not buying _anyone_ Christmas presents this year.

-

While Nick is not trusted to choose the new employees, it’s always her responsibility to train them in the ways of their new job. Apparently this is because Nick is the best at explaining and making the baby record shop employees feel like they’re at home, but Nick suspects that it’s actually just because no one else can really be bothered. 

It’s not like she minds, though. She’s _good_ at this. 

“Tell me again how to look up and order an album we don’t have for a customer, please, Harry,” she says, leaning against the counter and feeling superior. “Liam, you follow Harry’s instructions.”

“Um,” Harry says. The way her lips look in the matte red lipstick she’s wearing today is obscene. “What album?”

“Find me The Neighbourhood’s first EP, please,” Nick says. 

Harry purses her lips and frowns a little. Nick wants to die. “Do you know what it’s called?” she asks tentatively.

Nick nods approvingly. “Nope, sorry,” she replies, although she knows full well. 

“Okay,” Harry says, and turns to tell Liam to Google The Neighbourhood. Nick likes that. There’s a way to find out in the actual program Nick is currently teaching them to use, but Google is faster, which is exactly what Harry mutters guiltily at a Wikipedia article. Nick wants to write her a glowing recommendation letter (resourceful, team player, works well under pressure), and she hasn’t even been working for them for a full hour yet. 

Harry is not as good at balancing stacks of CDs in her hands and putting them away at the same time, but Nick is sure she could put a positive spin on clumsiness. She at least understands the organization immediately, which is more than Nick can say for other people she’s trained. Even the backroom (which admittedly looks like a complete disaster even though it isn’t) proves an easy feat for Liam and Harry to conquer. Nick wants to keep them both forever. 

“Are we nearly done?” Liam asks, interrupting Nick’s tirade about the merits of pop music and how they should be sure to be at least the slightest bit rude to any music snobs who come into the shop. (She can’t picture Liam or Harry being rude at all, but this is an important part of her training session. She has faith that they will be marvellously tactful and provide her with a lot of entertainment.) “It’s just that I promised my girlfriend I’d meet her? You said we’d be done around five?”

Nick checks the time on her phone. It’s ten past. She marvels. Liam is such a polite young lad. “Yes, of course, off with you, don’t keep her waiting any longer. See you Monday.”

“Thanks,” Liam says, scampering off like a little puppy to get his jacket and run out the front door. 

“He’s like a puppy,” Nick tells Harry.

“Yeah,” Harry says. “He’s in one of my classes and it’s a constant thing. I can hardly pay attention with his adorable face next to me.”

“I can imagine,” Nick says. 

There’s an awkward silence in which Nick and Harry stare at each other before Harry says, “So, is that it then?” 

“Yep, yep, that’s it.” Nick nods hurriedly. “You can go. Or stay. Or.”

Harry grins. Her smile is lopsided. Nick is angry. “No, I’ll go,” she says. “Bye, Nick.”

Nick swallows. “Bye, Harry,” she says. 

Harry wasn’t wearing a jacket, just another stupidly thin t-shirt, so she just wanders over to the door, stopping momentarily to straighten a shelf of vinyl, and turning to wave over her shoulder at Nick as she pushes the door open. Nick waves back. The door swings shut with a tell-tale jingle. 

Nick leans back against the wall and hits her head on it. “Fuck,” she tells the poster of Disclosure next to her face. Their sketched out faces don’t respond. Typical.

-

After a few weeks of Harry’s and Liam’s employment, Nick is still thoroughly happy with their choices. Neither of them have broken anything yet. Fiona had been saying just the other day that she thought that was probably a record. They’re also a lot of fun, and Nick finds herself spending a lot of her time hanging out up by the front desk, not to keep an eye on whichever employee (or both) is working, but to just have a chat (and also do very important work).

She’s doing just this on lazy Saturday when Liam bounces over to the checkout, empty box that had been full of new stock in his hands. He puts it back in the back room just like he’s supposed to, then leans over the counter to grin at Harry.

“What do you want?” she asks, rolling her eyes.

“Mind if I duck out for lunch early?” he asks. “If it’s all right with Nick, of course,” he adds, nodding to Nick. Nick shrugs. It’s only fifteen minutes, really, and she has faith that Liam isn’t going to go around making a habit of it.

“Are you meeting that girlfriend of yours?” Harry asks. “Don’t even answer that, just get out of my face.”

Liam grins. “Thanks, Hazza.”

Harry pushes Liam away from the counter. “Whatever,” she says, but she’s smiling fondly. 

Nick flips the page of her magazine idly. “Wonder what his girlfriend looks like,” she says after the door has swung closed behind Liam. 

Harry makes a noncommittal noise, and after a beat says, “I’d imagine something like that.”

“What?” Nick asks, the word dying in her throat as she looks up and spots the same thing Harry’s looking at--Liam greeting a tall girl with cheekbones that are, dare she think it, even more beautiful than Harry’s. She literally looks like she just stepped off the pages of Vogue, sleek black hair quiffed and pulled back in a ponytail, red lipstick, and all. 

“Holy shit,” Nick says. “She’s fucking _hot._ Our Liam’s done well for himself.”

“Oh no,” Harry says just as Liam leans in to kiss his girlfriend hello. “That’s hot. I can’t watch that.”

“It’s getting close to the surface of the sun here,” Nick agrees. 

Harry stares out the window, distaste evident on her face, “Isn’t she _cold_? Shouldn’t she, like, not be wearing that skirt, because no one should have to see those legs without adequate preparation. Maybe an introductory pamphlet.”

Nick wishes she’d been given an introductory pamphlet for Harry. Then maybe she wouldn’t be constantly shocked by her doing things like putting on Atomic Kitten and bopping around adorably, and apparently-- wait. Apparently also checking out other girls. “Wait--” Nick squeaks out, then stops herself short.

“What?” Harry asks, turning to Nick and raising an eyebrow. 

Liam and his girlfriend have disappeared from view now. Nick flounders. “I like the skirt,” she settles on. “Gotta show off her assets, right?”

Harry nods. “I can’t say I wouldn’t be doing the same if I were that drop dead gorgeous,” she says. 

_You are_ , Nick thinks. _You do_. She laughs aloud. “Well, yeah,” she agrees, hoping she sounds as nonchalant as she absolutely does not feel.

Maybe Harry is just appreciating the womanly form in a detached sort of manner. The kind of manner where she doesn’t want to have sex with women. Nick will tell herself that this is so, because the other option is the inviting entrance to a very dark path. One in the middle of a forest. With bad things lurking in the trees (like Matt Fincham and Fiona Hanlon. And Laura-May Coope, frowning at her phone). 

Nick isn’t going to go there.

-

It’s an accident, really. Nick didn’t mean to do it. She’s just blathering on about her weekend plans, pretty much to herself at this point, saying how excited she is for the concert and meeting up with all her friends, when Harry cuts in and says, “Can I come?” 

Nick looks up from where she’s been replying to emails and trolling her favourite sites for new music (multitasking is important). “Hmmm?” she asks, staring at Harry. 

“Can I come to the concert?” Harry repeats. “You said one of your friends, I can’t remember her name now, she couldn’t go anymore? So I assume you’ve got an extra ticket? I just wondered, ‘cause I’d pay, of course. You can say no, obviously.” She shrugs.

“Gillian,” Nick says. It’s a wonder that she hasn’t caught up yet, considering how slowly Harry talks. Maybe that’s why Harry talks so slow, because mere mortals can’t keep up with her talking and look at her at the same time. “Gillian can’t go anymore.”

Harry raises an eyebrow questioningly, and Nick is saying, “Sure, you should totally come,” before she even thinks about it. 

Harry’s face breaks out into a wide smile, and that’s it. There’s no way Nick could take it back now.

-

Nick deliberately does not spend a lot of time deciding what she’s going to wear to the concert--she throws on skinny jeans and a t-shirt that doesn’t have any holes with a nice jacket on top and calls it good. She doesn’t want to spend too much time picking out jewellery, so she shoves practically her entire collection of bracelets onto her arms, and then she obviously needs to have necklaces to match. (If she could layer earrings, she probably would have done that, too.) She spends the normal amount of time on her hair, trying to no avail to get her quiff to stand up completely straight, and absolutely does not spend a good minute clutching the counter in the bathroom and hyperventilating into the mirror because she can’t decide which colour lipstick to wear. (She texts Aimee, who tells her to just go for pink.)

She’d agreed to pick Harry up, and she frets the entire time they’re in the car about whether everyone will like Harry or if Harry will like everyone, and will people judge her for bringing one of her employees, and--

It turns out she needn’t have worried. Everyone immediately adores Harry, which is just typical. Cara plasters herself to Harry’s side and touches Harry’s curls like she’s never seen curly hair before, which makes Harry giggle and start stroking Cara’s hair while chatting to Pixie and Alexa about who even knows what.

Nick goes straight in on the drinking. Henry is giving her a knowing look from behind his boyfriend’s hair, and Nick wants to go find a broom cupboard to hide in. 

It gets a lot easier to handle once Nick is drunk and bouncing along to the music at the actual concert. As long as she doesn’t look directly at Harry, who somehow even looks perfect with her hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, she feels pretty great. 

They almost go back to Nick’s flat after, but then Annie sees the crazed look in her eyes and volunteers her own place instead. Nick owes Annie so much. Harry cannot be in Nick’s flat, where Nick lives all the time, because then Harry would _be in her flat_ , probably petting her dog and chatting to her friends and looking right at home. Nick would be so fucked. Like, even more fucked than she already is. Which is a lot.

“I’m so fucked,” she tells Collette. Collette pats her head and pours her another glass of red wine. Nick loves Collette. 

-

Later in the week, Nick is lying on Aimee and Ian’s sofa, having a staring contest with Thurston. “Go play with Puppy,” she tells him, wondering where the hell Puppy even got off to. “Go find Puppy.” Thurston doesn’t listen, instead opting to lie down and close his eyes. Nick sighs. “Ugh, whatever.”

There’s an episode of Great British Bake Off on the telly, but Nick has already seen this one. Aimee is apparently cooking in the kitchen, which Nick assumes means she’s ordering Chinese. She hasn’t got a clue where Ian is, so maybe he’s the same place that Puppy is.

Sure enough, Puppy comes scampering into the living room not five minutes later, Ian following behind her. He sits down in the armchair and raises his eyebrows at Nick. “Aimee told me about your new employee,” he says.

“Did she,” Nick says. She is an ocean. Oceans are calm. Oceans do not care.

Ian nods. “I hear she’s really nice,” he says.

Nick rolls her eyes. “You’ve met her at the shop,” she points out. 

“That’s not the same as when she came out with us,” Aimee declares, drifting into the room and sitting down on Ian’s lap. “She was a great time, well funny.”

“Was she,” Nick says, still doing her ocean impression. “I suppose so.”

Aimee and Ian exchange one of those annoying glances that couples do. “Attractive, too,” Ian says.

Nick shrugs. She would rather discuss literally anything other than Harry. She tries not to think about Harry, seeing as the last time she’d done that (it may or may not have been yesterday), she’d ended up with Puppy licking her face in bed while she lamented the fact that she definitely fancies Harry, like, the tiniest bit. Not enough to even really bother considering. At all. Ever.

“Is there food coming?” she asks. “I’m trying to eat you out of house and home here.”

“Yeah, yeah, they said thirty minutes,” Aimee says, rolling her eyes.

Puppy jumps up on the sofa and curls up on Nick’s stomach, and Ian starts flipping through the channels on the telly, and that’s that. 

-

“I’m worried about you,” Matt says, cornering Nick in the back room. 

“You? Worrying? That’s a new one, Finchy, wow.” She tries to duck around him and is thwarted when he moves in front of her. 

Matt lets out a long suffering sigh. “Come on, Nick.”

Nick stops trying to get around Matt and huffs at him. “What?”

“I just wanted to remind you about what you said,” Matt says. “About watching yourself with Harry.”

Nick frowns. “I haven’t forgotten.” Matt looks skeptical, so Nick repeats it. “I haven’t! I swear, Matt. No shagging employees over here.”

“Well, stop whispering and giggling with her in corners,” Matt says. “You’ll just lead her on.”

“Oh, please.” Nick snorts. “Harry isn’t into me, it’s fine. We’re just chatting, kind of like you and me right now. In a super incompatible manner. Would you mind getting out of my way? Work to do.” She holds up the stack of vinyl in her hand like it’s proof. 

Matt steps out of the way. “Just… be careful,” he says. His voice is unbearably soft. Nick has always preferred it when he’s yelling. 

“Sure thing, Finchy,” she says, flashing him a bright grin. 

-

So maybe Nick wasn’t exactly being careful when she said she’d go clubbing with Harry. At least, Matt definitely wouldn’t think so, and that is why Nick is never, ever going to tell him. 

He would just say _I told you so_ in that fucking snarky tone he gets sometimes, and the worst part is that Nick would totally deserve it, because she was never prepared for Harry’s stupid flailing dancing and her long legs. Nick needs to down like twenty more colourful drinks before she’s anywhere near okay with this.

They’re here with Harry’s flatmates, Niall and Louis. They’re both whirlwinds of energy, long blonde and brunette hair everywhere, and being around them makes Harry nearly as crazy. Nick can barely keep up, but Harry had looked at her with those pleading eyes, saying she _needed_ Nick to come, and so. Well. Nick is here, sitting on a bar stool and pouring sugary pink liquid down her throat.

Harry breaks away from where she’s dancing with Niall and Louis and makes her way over to Nick carefully, obviously trying not to trip over her heeled boots. She makes it safely, giggling as she leans heavily against the bar. “You should come dance, Nick!” she yells over the bass of a Miley Cyrus remix. 

Nick shakes her head. “You don’t want me to do that,” she says, leaning in close to Harry so she can be heard over the music. “I’m a mess.”

“You’re not a mess,” Harry insists, gesturing to Nick’s dress. “You look perfect!” She picks up Nick’s drink and finishes off the last of it, smiling dumbly at Nick as she puts the glass back on the bar. Nick smiles back. 

“Hazza!” Louis yells, stumbling out of the crowded dance floor and onto Harry. Quite literally onto, not into, because she digs her hand into Harry’s hair and lays one on her. Nick is so close that she can see Louis biting Harry’s lower lip, and when she tries to look away her gaze lands on where Harry has her hand on Louis’ waist, pulling her in. Nick blinks rapidly, trying to figure out if this is a remarkably lucid dream.

Harry and Louis are still kissing when the barman brings Nick a new drink, and Nick is beginning to wonder if they’re ever going to stop when Niall bounces up behind Louis and grabs the back of her vest, tugging her away and grabbing her hand to drag her back onto the dance floor. Louis goes, giggling, and leaves Nick with Harry’s spit slick mouth, lipstick smudged at the edges where it turns into a tiny smile. 

Nick stares. She can’t help it. No one could blame her. 

Harry is drinking Nick’s alcohol again before Nick manages to get out, “What was that?” 

“Louis?” Harry asks. 

Nick waves an incredulous hand around. “No, I know that. What was--” She waves her hands some more.

“We do that sometimes,” Harry says, nonchalant, like she hasn’t just shattered everything Nick thought she knew to pieces. 

It’s approximately an entire Ice Age of Harry looking at Nick with her amused grin plastered on her face before Nick manages to get out, “So, like, you-- you like girls, then?”

Harry just giggles and disappears back onto the dance floor. She takes Nick’s alcohol with her. Fuck.

“Well, fuck,” Nick says to herself. Harry seems to make her do that a lot. She’s still trying not to think about it. 

That’s probably not going to work anymore.

-

Nick taps the end of her pen against the table. “It’s so typical of Matt to tell us all we can’t be late and then be late himself,” she complains. 

LMC makes a noncommittal noise, and Fiona sighs. They’re supposed to be discussing their plans for the holiday season for the first time, but alas, Matt has not shown up. Nick wants to go home and go back to bed. 

“What’s this?” Fiona asks, grabbing the hand Nick was holding her pen in. She drops it on the floor and swears. 

“You making me drop my pen? That’s you being rude,” Nick says. 

Fiona rolls her eyes. “No, _this_ ,” she says, pointing at the writing on the back of Nick’s hand. 

Nick thinks she probably blushes, but she would never in a million years admit it. “It’s nothing,” she says, pulling her hand away and leaning down to grab her pen. It _is_ nothing. Really.

Fiona is staring at her when she straightens back up. LMC has even put down her phone. “You’re gonna tell us what that is right now,” Fiona says.

“Looks like song titles,” LMC says. “Heart Out, Brand New Day, um, does that say Bridges?”

Nick sighs. “It is song titles. It’s a mix,” she explains. “It’s supposed to be for the perfect road trip.”

“You never used to write mixes on yourself,” Fiona says suspiciously. 

Nick pretends she’s sinking into the floor. “No, Harry and I do it,” she says. “It’s not a big deal.”

Fiona pulls Nick’s arm toward her, Nick making a cursory effort to resist but eventually letting Fiona flip it over so she can see that the songs continue down the inside of Nick’s arm. She watches as Fiona reads them to herself, lips mouthing the words, _Everlasting Arms, Ends of the Earth._

“Sorry I’m late, guys, traffic was rough,” Matt says, the door slamming open behind him. Nick pulls her arm back and hides it under the table. Matt eyes them all. “What’s going on here?”

“Nothing,” LMC says. “It’s not a big deal. D’you wanna see my outline for Christmas promo?”

“Of course I do,” Matt says, sitting down next to her. Nick stares at the table top and tries to center herself again. _It’s not a big deal,_ she tells herself again, over and over, and eventually she (maybe, sort of, almost) believes it. 

-

By all rights, Nick should be tucked up in her bed at home, watching something stupid on telly, (so what if she gets in bed at stupidly early times, Fiona is always going to be worse than she is), but instead she’s sitting behind the counter at the record shop, watching Harry add new stock to the rock section. 

Harry has been telling Nick about the time she walked in on Zayn and Liam making out in the quiet study room at the library for the past ten minutes at least, because Harry is terrible at telling a story and keeps going off on tangents about the layout of the library and such. Normally Nick would hate that, but she’s perfectly content to sit and nudge Harry back in the right direction, which is slightly terrifying. 

“So they’re never going to make out at the library again, right?” Nick asks. 

Harry snorts. “They probably will anyway,” she says. “But I think I might start knocking on doors before I open them.”

“A good idea,” Nick agrees. 

“Speaking of,” Harry says, rearranging a row of CDs to make room for more, “Niall and Louis have been acting really strange lately.”

Nick has no idea how that’s related in anyway to the previous conversation, but whatever. “Oh yeah? How so?”

Harry shrugs. “Avoiding each other? Not giggling in the kitchen at all hours? Just… the general air of weird, you know?”

Nick nods. She thinks about Niall’s hand tugging on the fabric of Louis’ vest and wrapping around her wrist, pulling her away from Harry. “Maybe they’re just working something out,” she offers. 

“Well, yeah.” Harry huffs a laugh, shoving a CD a little too hard into the display. “They obviously are. Sometimes they’ll bump into each other outside the bathroom and just stand there and stare at each other for five years. It’s super annoying, and I wish they’d stop.” 

“They’ll get over it soon,” Nick says, hoping she’s right. “And if they’re bothering you too much, you can always call me or something.”

Harry stops what she’s doing to smile at Nick. “Thanks,” she says. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

\- 

It’s a cold evening in late November and Nick is getting home from the record shop late. She’s fumbling with her front door when her phone vibrates in her pocket. She doesn’t think anything of it, too focused on defeating the stupid fucking door that always freezes shut, going so far as to yank off her gloves and throw them on the ground so she can get a better grip on the doorknob. 

When she finally busts the door open, she nearly goes flying into the flat, tripping over a barking Puppy and losing her scarf. “For fuck’s sake,” she says, and goes to find both herself and Puppy some food. 

She finds Puppy food, but there isn’t anything appealing in the fridge. By the time she’s finally changed out of work clothes and into her favourite Dr Dre t-shirt and ratty pajama bottoms, and she flops down on her sofa to check her phone, it’s been a good twenty minutes since Harry texted her. 

_Hey Nick! so Niall and Louis got their shit together and I have an essay due. The walls are thin. Do you mind if I come over? .xx_

Nick stares at her phone for a moment, then texts back the only thing she really can. 

_Of course, no problem! I’m gonna order food, tell me what you want please._

She follows it up with her address because she can’t remember if Harry has it and it’s better to be safe than sorry. Puppy traipses into the room and lies down underneath the coffee table. “Me too,” Nick tells her, and then texts Aimee. 

_I think I just said Harry can stay at my flat. I’m wearing pjs. What have i done. Help._

She adds a string of panicked emojis and sends it before grabbing a throw pillow and shoving it over her face. She is so screwed. This is literally going to be the end. 

-

It’s actually not so bad, except for how it totally is. Harry is also wearing jogging bottoms when she shows up, so that makes Nick feel better, and she seems content to eat pizza sitting on Nick’s sofa while Nick keeps changing the channel on the telly because she can never settle on anything.

That’s basically it, because once they’ve eaten and Harry’s insisted on helping with the washing up (Nick had tried to tell her it was fine, really, she didn’t need to do it, but Harry hadn’t listened and Nick had to watch her get up to her elbows in soap suds. She’d kind of wanted to cry), Harry excuses herself to put on her headphones and sit in the corner staring intently at her laptop screen and tapping away at the keyboard.

It’s not a big deal, except for how Nick has now seen Harry in her flat, doing fully domestic things and looking like she belongs. She could picture Harry living here, doing exactly the same things day in and day out, and she can’t think about that. She can’t let herself, but it’s not like she can stop herself either. 

She texts Aimee a bunch of sad faces and gets no response. Figures, really. Nick wouldn’t respond either.

-

“She was doing the washing up, Aimee. The _washing up_ ,” Nick moans, shoving her face into Aimee’s thigh. “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

Aimee pats Nick’s head. “Now now, love, Harry’s not a bad thing, don’t say that.”

Nick groans. “But you don’t understand, she _is._ At least, she is when she’s doing washing up. Washing up plus Harry Styles equals danger. Harry Styles plus anything… equals danger.”

“You’re so drunk,” Aimee says, somehow managing to sound both exasperated and fond at the same time. 

“I’m not drunk enough,” Nick says. “I will never be drunk enough.”

“Okay, Miss Drama Queen, I brought you another drink,” Ian says, swanning into the living room and handing Nick something strangely orange. Nick doesn’t question it. She loves Ian. Ian is the best one. “You’re the best one,” she tells Ian.

Ian snorts and moves Nick’s feet so he can sit at the other end of the sofa. Nick immediately puts her feet in Ian’s lap, and he does not look impressed nor surprised about it in the least. “So, what are you gonna do about it?” he asks.

Nick stares at him, shifting herself up on the couch so that she can both lean against Aimee and properly drink her drink. “What is there to do?” she asks. She honestly can’t think of a single thing.

“You could stop hanging out with her,” Aimee says. 

Nick blinks. “What?” 

“Stop hanging out with her,” Ian says, putting his hand on Nick’s ankle. “It’s not in her employee contract that you associate with her at all hours, much less let her come over to your house.”

Nick stares into the middle distance, trying to process this. She finishes her drink before she figures out an appropriate response. “But, like, aren’t we friends now? Like, she came out with everyone and has washed my dishes, like, can’t I not ditch her at this point? Wouldn’t that be mean?”

“You could do it if you really wanted to,” Aimee says gently. “I’m pretty sure being mean wouldn’t really scare you off.”

“But I don’t want to,” Nick says, her voice small. She’s staring at the carpet now, avoiding eye contact.

Nick can feel the rise and fall of Aimee’s chest as she sighs in her ear, and Ian pushes Nick’s feet off so he can get up. “I’m getting more alcohol,” he says. “We clearly need it.”

-

Nick does not stop hanging out with Harry, because she has come to accept that she actually has no control over her life and may as well not even try. This is how it becomes mid-December and Harry ends up in Nick’s flat again, this time carefully placing biscuit dough onto a baking tray while Nick flutters about trying to be useful. (It’s just that making biscuits from the already done up mixes you just add water to is really a one person job. She regrets ever giving Harry her address, because apparently Harry just shows up when she needs to destress from studying for exams now. Nick didn’t sign up for this.)

“You know, we could make way better biscuits,” Harry says, eyeing the baking tray in distaste.

Nick snorts. “Maybe _you_ could make better biscuits, but I can’t. This is literally it. Betty Crocker is a blessing.” She’s made the same stupid biscuits for record shop every year since the record shop was born. There’s no point in improving on what’s perfectly good. 

“We should do it, though,” Harry says. “You can help. You can mix the dough.”

“Wow, thanks.” Nick rolls her eyes. “I don’t think I even have any flour, so good luck.”

Harry gets a mischievous glint in her eyes, and that’s how Nick finds herself in the middle of Tesco, trailing behind Harry, who is merrily pushing along a trolley like she hasn’t a care in the world. Nick wants a nap. 

Instead of a nap, Nick gets to pay for all the ingredients necessary to make “proper Christmas biscuits”, as well as a bunch of bananas (Harry had looked at them wistfully), and an assortment of reindeer antlers and Santa hats. (Harry had put on a Santa hat and then decided they should be a Christmas uniform at the record shop, and, well. She’d looked too adorable for Nick to resist, and besides that, now Nick will get to see Matt wear a Santa hat. She’s excited about it.)

“Here,” Harry says when they’ve finally reached the front of the queue and are checking out. She picks up the reindeer antlers the cashier just scanned through and reaches over to Nick to put them on her head, carefully situating them behind Nick’s quiff and fiddling to move them into place. Nick doesn’t dare breathe until Harry moves her hands away from the vicinity of her face. “There, you look proper festive.”

“Great,” Nick says. She imagines her face must resemble a grape at this point, but no one says anything. Then again, it is England, where no one really gives enough of a damn about the state of your face in general to bother mentioning it to you.

Harry tries to cram all the Santa hats on her own head, giggling all the while. The cashier tuts at her the slightest bit, and Nick avoids eye contact. 

Later, though, when Harry is dancing around Nick’s kitchen singing Mariah Carey at the top of her lungs with a makeshift tinsel scarf wrapped around her neck, Nick is pretty sure it was all worth it ten times over.

-

Christmas time is very chill--Harry goes home for the holiday and Nick takes a few days to go visit her family, and it’s great. She doesn’t have to see Harry almost every day, and she tries not to think about her as well, and sometimes it even almost works. 

The problem is that it always had to end, didn’t it, and the record shop throws a party every year for New Year’s, so obviously Harry is going to be there, and Nick is _required_ to be there (she’d asked, even though she knew the answer), so. 

Nick hasn’t seen Harry yet, save for perhaps a glimpse of her hair from across the room, but she’s been working up to it all night, by which she means her friends have been handing her alcohol. (Apparently all of them know about her issues, the fucking nosy bastards.) Nick spends too much time drunk because of Harry Styles, but hey. This time it’s a holiday. She has a culturally relevant reason to be drinking. 

There’s only five minutes until midnight. Nick is suddenly irrationally angry at everyone in this bar and the world in general. Why _can’t_ she have Harry? What cruel injustice in the world made it so that they had to meet the way they did? (Then she feels bad, because she can’t imagine _not_ meeting Harry.)

“Nick, hey,” Annie says, appearing at Nick’s side. “You good?”

“I’m good.” Nick nods. “Ready for the big New Year’s moment?”

Annie laughs. “My man’s here somewhere,” she says, taking a sip from her glass of champagne. “You got anyone to snog?”

Nick immediately thinks of Harry, because she always thinks of Harry. (She thinks about kissing Harry all the time.) “Maybe,” she says, just to avoid the question, and then she thinks _maybe._

Annie grins at her, leaning in to give her a hug. “Love you, lady,” Annie says, patting Nick’s arm.

“Love you too,” Nick replies, and Annie waves before heading off to find her boyfriend. 

Nick finishes her drink and abandons the glass on a table, scanning the crowd of friends and record shop associates alike for Harry’s unmistakable hair. She finally spots it near the back of the bar and makes her way straight for it, elbowing past people to get there.

“Harry,” she says, and Harry turns around, a bright grin on her face.

“Nick!” she practically squeals, and then Nick has Harry wrapped around her, pressing her cheek into the curve of Nick’s neck and giggling. “I was hoping I’d see you before midnight!”

Nick hugs back, face stuck in Harry’s curls. “Yeah?” she asks. They stop hugging, but Harry is still standing right in Nick’s space. They’re toe to toe, staring into each other’s eyes, hands on each other’s forearms, and Nick wonders if Harry thinks the world has narrowed to just the two of them to way Nick does. 

“Yeah,” Harry says softly, and Nick could do it. She could kiss her. She could do it right now, but she’s not going to, because in like a minute it’ll be midnight and it won’t be weird to do it. It won’t even be a thing. 

Around them everyone is buzzing, some people enthusiastically starting countdowns only for them to die out before being picked up again by a different group of people. Nick’s skin is crawling and she can’t figure out how her hands work. 

“Ready?” Harry says under her breath, and Nick wonders again if she’s thinking the same thing Nick is. Probably not. She doesn’t spend every day desperately imagining what it would be like to kiss Nick. Nick is like 99% sure about this. Still though, she kisses friends for fun. Nick is her friend. They can kiss for fun. It’ll be fun. 

Harry’s lips are shiny and pink with lip gloss, and Nick wants. “Your eyes are very green,” she tells Harry, because it’s safer than _your lips are so luscious, can I kiss you?_ Harry giggles, and Nick feels impossibly light.

Nick catches a glimpse of blonde hair out of the corner of her eye and automatically turns to look at it. It’s Aimee, of course, staring at Nick with wide eyes from a few metres away. She shakes her head the tiniest bit, and Nick comes crashing back down to Earth.

She can’t do this. This will fuck everything up. “I have to go,” she says to Harry, stepping back and bumping into someone she thinks is Matt’s friend. “Sorry, I--” What the hell was she even thinking? “Sorry, I have to go, I can’t--”

Harry’s face is screwed up in confusion. “Wait, Nick, they’re going to start the countdown,” she says, reaching out for Nick. Nick jerks her arm away and trips over her feet, shaking her head.

“Your eyes are so green,” she says helplessly, and she can see Aimee watching with a look of dismay on her face. “Somewhere to be,” she lies, and she turns and does her best to not look like she’s running when she absolutely, undoubtedly is. 

She rings in the new year in a public toilet, listening to the loud cheers of everyone in the bar as the clock strikes twelve. It’s stupid, trying to figure out what she was thinking, because she doesn’t even need to figure it out at all. She knows what she was thinking, and it was something along the lines of _I really want to know what Harry’s lips feel like against mine at least once._

(There was something about feelings, too, Nick supposes for a brief moment, but those aren’t really important.)

-

“Finchy,” Nick says, kicking the back of his chair, “I have something important to tell you.”

“What? Can’t this wait for five seconds? Can’t you have had something important to tell me when I came back here to ask if you were feeling all right and not when I’m busy?”

Nick shrugs. She’s been working (read: hiding) in the back office of the shop for most of the day in an effort to restrict herself from Harry interaction. “I’ve made a New Year’s resolution,” she declares.

Finchy sighs and spins the chair around to face Nick. “Okay, what is it?” 

“Gonna go to the gym more,” Nick says, just to see Matt roll his eyes. “Kidding, as if. I’m going to spend more time this year focusing on myself. No distractions, you know? No fancying employees. Just. All me, all the time.”

Matt stares at her. “First off, that doesn’t sound new, and second of all, you really mean no more Harry, don’t you?”

Nick frowns. “You don’t have to _say_ these things, Finchy,” she says, huffing.

“Maybe I do,” Matt says, spinning back around. Nick elects to ignore that.

-

On a boring morning that should really be just like any other, Harry is straightening up the vinyl section, humming along to the record Nick just put on the overhead speakers, when Nick realises just what all those moments that weren't supposed to matter have added up to.

It’s like, normally Liam works the morning shifts at the shop and has classes later, while Harry does the opposite, so Nick has taken to coming in earlier than she used to. She kind of likes it, really, quiet mornings in the shop listening to Liam sing Justin Timberlake under his breath while she does paperwork and the city slowly gets busier outside the windows. 

Knowing that Harry had picked up one of her rare morning shifts, Nick really wouldn’t have come in, except she has to be there to organise a delivery. (That’s her story, and she’s sticking to it.)

So it happens that a series of events line themselves up perfectly so that Nick can be wearing the same clothes she wore yesterday solely because she couldn’t be bothered to pick new ones, her hair is a rat’s nest, and she’s restlessly organising and reorganising files at the front desk when she looks up and happens to catch Harry’s eye. Harry smiles at her and then turns away to tuck an Adele vinyl back where it belongs, and Nick’s heart sinks into her belly, spreading warmth everywhere, and Nick thinks oh no.

She mentally waves goodbye to her new year’s resolution as it flies out the window, not even a full month into the year. (She never was any good at that rubbish in the first place.)

She just had to go and actually fall in love, didn’t she? It couldn’t just be wanting to snog the pants off a hot girl, no, because when has Nick’s life ever been simple enough for that?

It’s Harry’s fault, really, for having such eclectic music taste and weird ways of thinking about the world and taking too many pictures and Instagramming them later with stupid deep captions and always listening when Nick talks and laughing at her jokes and making stupid puns at every available opportunity and falling asleep on Nick’s sofa and washing dishes that she’d never even used and smiling. Mostly that last thing, but everything else, too, because none of it was supposed to matter, but then, well. It did.

-

Harry shows up in the shop when she’s not supposed to be working (and therefore when Nick is totally unprepared) and leans on the counter, smiling like she’s up to something.

“What are you doing here?” Nick asks. 

“Come on a road trip with me,” Harry says. “I’m feeling like the beach.”

Nick thinks that Harry is kind of like the beach, all sunny and care free and stuck to you three days after you’ve left it. “It’s barely February,” Nick says instead.

“That’s not a no,” Harry says.

“No, then,” Nick says.

Harry just smiles. “But I came in when I’m not even working specifically to ask you to come on a road trip with me.” She pouts, looking up at Nick through her eyelashes and batting them. Her mascara is perfect. Nick will never understand perfect mascara. She will never understand Harry. “It’ll be fun. Come alooooong, Nickyyyyyyy,” Harry drawls out dramatically before going back to pouting. 

Nick tries to look like she isn’t being swayed. “I have work to do.”

Harry rolls her eyes. “You make your own hours,” she points out.

Nick has never hated that fact more than she does now. “Fine, I’ll come,” she says. “But you’re driving.”

“Perfect, see you at yours bright and early Saturday,” Harry says. “You’re in charge of the music.”

She’s out the door before Nick can even open her mouth to respond to that.

-

The car journey starts out awkward. At least, Nick is feeling pretty awkward about it. She’d put a few playlists on her iPod to hook up to the car’s sound system, and then she’d been nervous immediately after she got in the car and just picked the first one, which is the one with all the slow indie songs about love. 

Harry looks pretty content, actually, from what Nick can tell from the quick glances she keeps throwing over at her. She’s tapping her fingers on the steering wheel and humming along to the song, while Nick is doing her best to not scream or just throw herself out of the car. 

“So, um,” Nick says, “how are your classes going?”

Harry shoots Nick a look. Nick wants to die. She never talks about boring small talk things with Harry. She doesn’t really need to start now, and Harry no doubt knows that. “They’re good,” Harry replies, and then she starts rambling about a group project she’d done last week that had, apparently, been the bane of her existence. 

The worst part, Nick muses, is that she’s actually really enjoying listening to Harry talk about this. Maybe she should ask Harry about stupid small talk things more. Maybe she’ll try the weather next.

Nick regales Harry with one of her own tales from uni life, and then when there’s a natural lapse in the conversation, “Why are we going to the beach in the winter?” falls out of her mouth instead of anything she’d actually planned to say. 

Harry doesn’t answer for a moment, then reaches to turn down the music, and says, “We’re okay, right? Like, you and me.”

Nick’s heart bobs around in her throat so that she can’t speak for a minute. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, why wouldn’t we be okay?” 

“I dunno,” Harry says. “I just felt… weird.” 

“Well, yeah, you are pretty weird,” Nick says. She feels terrible. It had been going so well, and now look at it. She’s fucked everything up. 

Harry snorts. “Please, look who’s talking,” she retorts, and Nick can’t help but smile.

“We’re good,” she says, just to make sure Harry was listening. “I promise.”

“Okay,” Harry says. She makes an aborted movement toward the volume control, then says, “Did you make any playlists that can’t be alternately titled ‘songs to cry to’?”

Nick laughs. “No, because I firmly believe you can cry to _any_ music,” she says, but she reaches for the iPod and puts on the playlist with the cheesy pop music instead. Harry immediately turns it up loud and starts scream-singing along to Paramore, and after a moment Nick thinks _fuck it_ and joins in.

-

Somehow the beach in February is a lot of fun. (Nick wouldn’t be able to explain to anyone else, because she has no idea what they even really _did_ , but it is anyway.)

Harry scours the sand for seashells, and Nick makes a game of finding rocks that look like seashells from far away but actually aren’t just to laugh at Harry’s annoyed face when she figures it out. 

“There aren’t seashells here,” Nick says eventually, “as I’m pretty sure you’ve driven us to a lake, sweetheart.”

Harry glares at her. “It’s the principle of the thing,” she says flippantly. “I am pretending we are at the ocean.”

“Okay,” Nick agrees. “Can we get food?”

“Only if it’s fish and chips,” Harry says, and Nick can’t see a reason to protest that. 

They eat their fish and chips sitting at a picnic table, fingers greasy and frozen. Harry wipes her fingers on Nick’s jacket instead of the perfectly good serviette in front of her, and Nick gasps and moves to retaliate only for Harry to shriek and run away before she can. Nick ends up chasing her down the beach, laughing until her sides hurt from the combined effort and she slows down, yelling at Harry that she gives up. Harry flops down in the sand and lies there, staring up at the sky. 

When Nick catches up to her, she’s actually got her eyes closed and is in the process of carefully tucking her hands into the pockets of her coat. Nick stares down at her. “Dare I ask what you’re doing?”

“I’m obviously suntanning,” Harry says. “Join me.”

Nick does so without complaint. “You’ve noted that the sun is not shining, right?”

“Shut up.”

The ground is very cold, and Nick doesn’t really know what she was expecting. “Did you bring me out here today to subtly murder me by letting the environment do the work for you?”

“Of course not,” Harry mumbles. “Stop bloody asking questions.”

“Fine, fine,” Nick says. She gives Harry a moment before she asks, “Can we leave now?” 

“Oh my God!” Harry shrieks, sitting up and hitting Nick in the shoulder. “Shut up, shut up, shut _up_ ,” she repeats, punctuating every word by hitting Nick. 

Nick dissolves in laughter, cowering away from Harry’s hands and trying to grab them to stop her. “Stop, stop, no punches, christ.” She manages to grab one of Harry’s hands and keep hold of it, then squirms her way into a sitting position and catching Harry’s other hand on its way to her shoulder. “Ha, got you.”

Harry makes a cursory effort to tug her hands away, but Nick just tightens her grip, and Harry gives up, leaving them sitting on a beach with their hands tangled together, staring at each other. “Um,” Nick says.

“I like you,” Harry says, throwing it out there like it’s no big deal. Nick stares. There are about five hundred different things Harry could mean by that, and Nick is not equipped for 499 of them. 

“Er, I like you, too,” Nick squeaks out, because it’s the only response she has to all five hundred options anyway.

“I’m really glad we’re friends,” Harry adds. “Like, I could have gotten a really shitty job and had that to deal with on top of uni, but instead I met you and Finchy and Fiona and Liam and LMC and all your friends, and I just. I don’t know, I’m really happy.”

Nick’s heart turns to liquid and sloshes around inside her chest. “Me too,” she says. Friendship she can handle. Being on the same level as Finchy she can handle. This is good. “I’m glad you’re happy.”

Harry smiles and squeezes Nick’s hand. Nick squeezes back.

-

Everything in the club Harry and her friends like best is pink and red for Valentine’s Day, from the flashing lights to the little confetti hearts everywhere. It’s a bit (a lot) of an eyesore, but Nick’s willing to put up with it. There’s not a lot she wouldn’t begrudgingly do for Harry, and this time she’s not the only one that Harry dragged along--everyone from the record shop is here. Liam is grinding with Zayn off in the corner of the dance floor, Fiona and LMC have disappeared somewhere together, and Nick honestly hasn’t seen Finchy since they arrived. She’s been mostly sticking with Harry, who’s in turn been hanging around Niall and Louis, who (from what Nick can remember) don’t act any different now that they’re together than they did when they weren’t. 

There might be a bit more snogging, but really, Nick thinks, what’s a bit of snogging. She voices this to Harry, leaning into her space and yelling to be heard over the music, and Harry grins and nods at her. 

Nick might be a bit buzzed. She’s not drunk, not really, just hyped off a couple of drinks and the adrenaline of bouncing around on the dance floor next to Harry, but it’s enough to make her light headed and slap happy and completely willing to follow Harry when she gestures for her to come. 

Harry leads her away from the crowds, over to a dark corner where there’s a door propped slightly open that people are using to go outside for fresh air or a smoke or whatever. Harry stops a little ways away from it. “Here,” she says, leaning close to Nick. “We can get a bit of space without freezing our tits off.” 

Nick nods and leans against the wall. “My feet hurt,” she tells Harry. 

“It’s those heels you decided to wear,” Harry says. “They’re evil.”

“ _So_ evil,” Nick agrees. Harry’s cheeks are flushed pink, and she’s hovering just in front of Nick, face fixed in the dumb smile she gets when she’s drunk enough. Someone brushes by behind her and she automatically takes a step forward, closing the distance between them.

“Whoops.” Harry catches herself on the wall behind Nick and giggles. “Hi.”

Nick’s eyes cross when she tries to look at Harry. Harry has a strange definition of getting space. “Hi there, Hazza.”

“Heyyyyy,” Harry says, and then she kisses Nick. 

It’s quick at first, like she was testing it out, and then she kisses Nick like she means it. Nick goes with it, kissing her back and tasting vodka and strawberry lip gloss. Harry makes delightful little noises that Nick would like to record and listen to on bad days, and her hair is soft when Nick puts her hand in it, and Nick wants to keep this moment in a jar forever, because in the next one she remembers where they are and who they are and she jerks back, hitting her head on the wall. 

“Fuck, fuck.” Nick clutches at the back of her head, wincing in pain. Harry leans back, moves away the smallest bit, and it’s not nearly far enough for Nick’s comfort and simultaneously farther than Harry should ever be from her. 

“Are you okay?” Harry asks, concerned, reaching to smooth the hair that’s falling in Nick’s face back up. 

Nick nods. “I’m fine, just fine,” she says. 

“Let me just--” Harry says, grinning, and kisses Nick softly. It kind of makes Nick want to cry, and she wants to push Harry away, but it’s like her arms and lips don’t understand the signals from her brain anymore. “There,” Harry says. “Better?”

Nick stares at her. “Harry, this can’t happen.”

Harry stares back. “Why not?” 

Nick shakes her head. “I can’t. I’m taking advantage of you, and I can’t, like. I can’t.”

“I’m not so drunk that I don’t know what I’m doing,” Harry says, visibly annoyed now. Nick’s chest feels like it’s splitting down the middle so that her heart can fall out onto the floor at Harry’s feet.

“I just can’t,” Nick says again. 

Harry rolls her eyes. “I thought--never mind,” she says, and then she’s turned around and stalked off, disappearing in the crowd of people. 

Nick wants desperately to run after her, to get her to tell her what it was she thought and just to kiss her again, because now she knows exactly what she’s missing, fuck, but she forces herself to stay still and think about how she did the right thing, over and over and over, until she trusts herself to leave the club without passing Go and collecting Harry Styles’ heart. 

-

Harry is more sad than she was before. Nick wants to say she isn’t quite _sad,_ not really, but she also can’t think of any other word for it. She smiles the same and her laugh sounds the same and she takes forever to decide what to order at the coffee shop just like always, but sometimes she doesn’t quite meet Nick’s eyes and sometimes she doesn’t even hum when she’s working on stocking. 

It doesn’t help that now Nick second guesses everything she does and says so that now everything is awkward. She’s even awkward around other people when Harry’s not even there, solely because she was just daydreaming about Harry and she feels like they _know._

Nick hates it. Everything is exactly the same, except for how it’s not, and she wishes she could go back in time to--she doesn’t know what. Kiss Harry more? Not let Harry kiss her at all? Say _it’s not you, it’s me_? Say _I love you_? 

It’s probably part of the problem that she can’t work out what would fix it. 

-

Fiona and LMC find Nick sitting in a corner at the very back of the store room, hidden behind a stack of boxes of classic rock vinyl and staring at her hands. 

“Nick?” Fiona asks cautiously. 

“Go away,” Nick says. 

“Hell no,” LMC says, sitting down on the floor in front of Nick. Fiona sits down next to her, closing Nick in so that she can’t run away. “You’re gonna tell us what’s wrong with you.”

Nick frowns and refuses to look up. She studies her nails. Her right index fingernail is broken at the top. She should really do something about that. “Didn’t Matt already tell you?” 

She can just barely see Fiona and LMC exchange a look. “We kind of picked it up from the yelling, to be honest,” Fiona says. “But it would be nice to hear from you.”

Nick rolls her eyes. “I kissed Harry, I realised I shouldn’t be kissing Harry, it’s all fucked up. That’s all.”

“Matt says he thinks Harry kissed you,” Fiona says carefully. “And he’s not mad, Nick. He was just genuinely worried about you.” She pauses. Nick feels stupid. She _had_ known that Matt wasn’t trying to get on her case, really, because he’d had his concerned friend face on, not his concerned business partner face, but she’s been so on edge since Valentine’s Day that she just immediately exploded on the defensive. “Don’t you remember what I told you back in September?”

Nick laughs, and it comes out sounding more like a sob. “What, you didn’t get from the yelling that I think about it every day? I get it. I’m not supposed to shag the employees, and I was supposed to be careful, and I wasn’t. I knew I was doing it, but I fucked it up anyway.” Fuck, her eyes are damp.

LMC sighs her patented put-upon sigh. “Fiona told you not to break any hearts, dipshit, and guess what? That includes your own.”

“You realise at this point that shagging Harry would actually be acceptable, right?” Fiona says. “You’re breaking everyone’s heart by rejecting her, and it’s making it awkward, and look, I don’t really want to not invite Harry back to work after the holidays. I like the cute post-it notes she leaves on my desk too much.”

Nick hugs her knees to her chest and presses her face into her thighs, regretting wearing her nice polka dot patterned skinny jeans today. They’re almost too small, not comfortable to cower in a corner in at all, and she’s probably ruining them with her mascara to boot. “I don’t know what to do,” she mumbles.

“Figure it out, babe,” LMC says, standing and patting Nick’s leg. Nick can hear her shuffling away, and the sound of Fiona getting to her feet.

“Don’t think too hard about it,” Fiona says, and then she’s gone too.

-

“Hey, Nick?” Liam asks. Nick looks up from her paperwork to see Liam hovering the doorway of the office. 

“Yeah?”

Liam fidgets a bit. “So, Zayn and I were going to go to this comedy show on Saturday night, but it turns out she’s been voluntold to do some work for an art show at school, so she can’t go anymore, but it’s not like I can return the tickets or whatever, so, um, I was wondering if you wanted to go with me?”

Nick stares at him. “Me?” Liam nods. “Why?”

“You seem like you could use a laugh,” Liam says. 

“Well, I can’t argue with that,” Nick mutters. “Sure, I’ll go with you. Where is it? Do you want to meet there or somewhere else beforehand or what?” 

Liam steps into the office, offering a bit of paper to Nick. “I can meet you there,” he says. “All the info is on the ticket, and if you have a question you can just text me, right?”

“Right, of course,” Nick says, taking the ticket and looking around for her bag so she can store it away safely. She must have put it here somewhere. “See you Saturday,” she adds when she realises Liam is still standing around in the office.

“Ah, yep,” Liam says. “See you.” 

-

The comedy show is at a tiny little theatre that’s a pain in the arse to get to by tube, so Nick drives. She regrets that decision when takes her approximately a millennial age to park, and she ends up being a few minutes late and has to whisper apologies to a bunch of people as she shuffles through a row to her seat. Liam is sitting next to her, of course, and he grins when he sees her.

“Glad you could make it,” he leans over to whisper, and Nick smiles back at him. Someone behind them shushes them, and Nick turns to glare at them solely because she can.

The comedy show is actually really great, the comedians hitting that perfect balance of humour, and Nick is impressed by the time it’s over. Her sides hurt from laughing, and she feels a lot lighter than she has in possibly weeks.

“I’m almost glad Zayn couldn’t make it,” she tells Liam as they make their way outside. “I would never go to one of those on my own, and neither would any of my friends, but it was actually great.”

Liam smiles indulgently at her. “I thought you’d like it. Is that a thank you I hear?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Nick says. “Cheers. Want to go for a drink?”

“I was actually--”

“Don’t be silly,” Nick interrupts. “Come on, I’ll buy. Did you drive here?”

Liam shakes his head. “I walked.” 

Nick shudders. “Horrifying in this weather, but perfect for us,” Nick says, looping her arm around Liam’s and pulling him along. 

They end up recapping at least half the show on the way to a pub, and Nick thinks she might actually break with how much her sides are stabbing with pain. “That was probably the best one,” she says when Liam brings up the long string of constant puns that had compromised the hand off between two of the comedians. “Actually, I think that, uh,” She stumbles over her words the slightest bit, settling on, “my friend would have liked that a lot.”

Liam looks at her thoughtfully. Nick pulls into the car park and finds a parking space all without looking at Liam once, but Liam never looks away. “You mean Harry, don’t you,” Liam says.

It’s not a question, but Nick answers anyway. “No, I meant Henry. Loves a good pun, Henry does.”

“Uh huh,” Liam says, but he doesn’t press on with the subject, just gets out of the car. Nick knew she liked him for a reason. 

Of course, it was too good to be true, really, though it’s not until three drinks in that Liam asks, “D’you know how I knew I was in love?” 

“With me or with Zayn?” Nick shoots back, giggling at her own joke.

Liam rolls his eyes. “The way I see it,” he says, dragging his finger around the top of his beer glass, “love is like, when you look at something in a shop and you immediately think of someone and wish they were there to see it.”

“But I do that with, like, all my friends,” Nick points out.

“Exactly!” Liam says. “You love someone at least a little bit when things start reminding you of them. In a good way, of course, not a bad one. There’s loads of different ways to love someone.”

Nick purses her lips. “So how do you know if, like, it’s love love?” she asks. She can’t help it; she’s curious. 

Liam smiles, looking completely besotted. Nick wants to puke, or maybe just go home and have a cry. “You know when you look at something, and not only does it remind you of them, but you can’t really enjoy it unless you share it with them. Like, I saw a sunset earlier, and it was really pretty, but you know what would have made it beautiful? If Zayn had been there to see it with me.”

“That’s…” Nick blinks. “That’s really sappy and ridiculous.”

Liam shrugs. “That’s love,” he says, taking a sip of his beer. 

Nick looks at the last of her own beer and finishes it off before pushing the glass away. “I’d better be done now,” she says. “Water for me for the rest of the night. Do you know how to play pool, Liam Payne?”

“You bet I do,” Liam says. “Best two out of three?”

“You’re on,” Nick agrees.

-

Nick isn’t even hungover on Sunday, seeing as she’d barely gotten drunk in the first place, and then was completely sober by the time she’d kicked Liam’s arse at pool and it was time to drive him home, but she spends most of the day lying in her bed anyway, Puppy curled up next to her and the Food Network on the telly. 

She fiddles with her mobile, unlocking and locking it, and sending random pictures of Puppy being cute to her entire contacts, as well as randomly texting inane things to her friends and getting multiple _fuck off_ s in response. Nick’s not even sure why she’s still friends with half these people (except that, well, she would tell herself to fuck off, too). 

She doesn’t send anything to Harry. It would be nice if she could say it was unintentional, but she keeps opening and closing Harry’s text thread on her phone, staring at the last message Harry had sent her ( _haha .x_ ) and typing out the beginning of a text before deleting it and locking her phone again. Nothing she could say to Harry would really be what she wants to say to Harry. She doesn’t even know what she wants to say, but she knows that nothing she types is it. 

It’s just that the more she thinks about it, the more it sinks in that Liam was right about his definition of love. She had already known she was in love with Harry, but now it’s really sinking in that she’s never going to be able to look at anything the same way again. Even if she got over Harry, she thinks that she would keep looking at everything differently, trying to figure out what Harry would think and wishing Harry was with her, and, well. She doesn’t really want to do that. 

It’s nine in the evening before Nick finally just picks up her mobile, types out a text, and sends it without even reading it over. 

_I went out with Liam last night and a funny thing happened. He told me that you really like someone when you wish they were at the comedy show with you because you know you’d like it even more if they did, and that’s how I felt. I can’t seem to stop hiding from you. I wish I knew how to stop. Sorry._

Ten minutes later, when Nigella is perfecting the top of her pie crust, Nick’s phone starts vibrating. Harry’s face smiles up at her from the display. Nick stares at it, and Puppy raises her head to stare with her.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Nick tells Puppy. Her mobile stops vibrating, the green icon turning red and a missed call notification popping up before the screen goes dark again. 

Puppy looks unimpressed and tucks her head back down again, closing her eyes. Nick feels stupid. She should have just picked up the fucking phone and had an adult conversation with the object of her affections. She’s supposed to be the mature one, for fuck’s sake. (She’s never been the mature one. She’s never _going_ to be the mature one, but she still likes to think she’s making a good go of it. A girl can dream.)

Nick wishes she were a dog. Life would be five hundred times easier if her biggest concern was how to best escape the back garden fence. 

-

Nick goes to sleep early, so she wakes up early, too, and she resolutely decides that she refuses to continue lying in bed. Enough is enough, she decides, picking out the kind of outfit she would wear to a first dinner date (so, like, clothes that look like the rest of her clothes except without holes. She’s a simple person.) and tries very hard to put on the kind of makeup Aimee would refer to as ‘killer’. She even springs for red lipstick. 

Harry is supposed to be working the morning shift today, but Nick doesn’t care. She’s going to go to work anyway, and it’s going to be fine. 

The door jingles when she walks through it, which is still annoying and always will be, in particular because this time it makes Harry turn around and smile at her, waving, before going back to whatever she’s doing in the classical section. Something with a clipboard. Nick should probably know, but she’s too busy being upset that Harry can still even look at Nick, much less _smile_ at her. Harry Styles is too good for this world, and Nick will never ever deserve her. 

Nick tries to start on setting up the week’s delivery, but she keeps getting distracted from her foray through the latest on her bookmarked music blogs by Harry. Harry’s not even doing anything, just flipping through the records and scribbling on her sheet, but Nick can’t help but stare. How is she doing that? How is she in the same room as Nick without yelling at her? Nick thinks that Harry should maybe yell more. Where does all her tension _go_? Does she even get tension? 

Nick’s been there a full half an hour before she starts to really doubt that text she’d sent. She probably just should have not. She should have just booked a flight to Japan instead, where she could learn to speak Japanese and join a nunnery and never have to see Harry ever again. (She should have just _answered the phone_ when Harry called her.)

It’s an entire hour before Harry has worked her way to the end of the classical and hip-hop row (Nick had insisted they be next to each other because it’s hilarious), and she comes over to the front desk and drops the clipboard on it, leaning against it and looking at Nick. Nick swallows nervously.

“You’re really something,” Harry tells Nick. 

Nick isn’t sure if that’s supposed to be a compliment or an insult or what. She opens her mouth to respond, but Harry holds a finger up to stop her.

“You’re really something,” Harry repeats, “and I love you, you know?”

Nick feels like someone took a vacuum to her lungs. She did _not_ know, Harry, for fuck’s sake, is this even real life? Has Harry ever even been a real person? Could Nick get all that money she’s paid to this _fake_ employee back? 

“By the way, your lipstick looks fabulous,” Harry adds before picking up her clipboard and walking over to the pop section. Nick stares after her. 

“Thank you?” she says when she finally figures out how to get air in her lungs again. Harry giggles. 

-

Nick spends the rest of the day in a constant panic. She doesn’t get much of anything really done when Harry is working, so when the shifts switch and Liam starts working, Nick sticks around and actually does work, even though _I love you_ keeps bouncing around in her brain. 

“What do you do when someone tells you they love you?” Nick asks Liam sometime in the early evening, when everything she really needed to get done is sorted. “I mean, like, hypothetically. What do you do?” 

Liam stares at her. “I guess it depends whether you love them back?”

“Okay, so hypothetically, say you do?” Nick says.

“You tell them you love them too,” Liam says. “It’s not really that complex.”

“You’re very smart,” Nick tells Liam. 

“Okay,” Liam agrees. 

Nick switches the record playing on the overhead speakers to something happier and bounces restlessly around for a couple minutes before returning to the counter. “Um, so, how do you do that?” 

“You just do,” Liam says. 

Nick throws up her hands in frustration. What is with these _teenagers_ and just _saying_ things. This is not how Nick was raised. 

She sits down and gets out her mobile to text actual people her own age. Fiona is the first to reply, but her response consists solely of emojis that clearly mean nothing. LMC responds within a few seconds of Fiona with just the fingernail painting emoji. Ian says lol a bunch of times in a row, and Aimee texts _oh ffs, get your shit together and shag her already_ , which is a nice sentiment but not exactly what Nick was looking for. 

Matt is actually the most helpful, surprisingly, telling her _Just go for coffee like you usually do in the morning and tell her you love her. Put us all out of our misery, please, or I will take your share of the business and leave you on the streets._

_Thanks Matty xoxo_ , Nick responds, and then texts Harry to ask if she’s available to get coffee tomorrow. 

_Yep! Meet me before class at the usual place .xx_

Nick takes a deep breath and starts rehearsing her speech in her head immediately. 

-

Nick arrives fifteen minutes early the next morning, which is entirely too many minutes to spend pacing outside of a Starbucks. Harry rocks up a minute before the time they usually meet and looks surprised to see Nick standing there. 

“You’re usually late,” she says. 

“I’m turning over a new leaf,” Nick says. “I’m going to be early to everything all the time.”

Harry laughs. “Yeah, I’m sure. That’ll last about a week.”

It would, too, if Nick was even actually attempting it, which she is not. “I might just settle for on time,” she says. 

“Probably an easier goal,” Harry says. “Good morning, by the way.”

“G’morning,” Nick replies. “Shall we go inside?” She gestures to the door, then thinks better of it and just opens it so that Harry can walk through ahead of her. Chivalry is not dead. Or something. 

Nick notices that her hands are shaking while they’re standing in the queue to order. She tries to stuff them in the pockets of her jacket, but that just makes her entire body start vibrating, and Harry is totally side eyeing her already. She should have got up and run a few kilometres this morning to work off all the nervous energy, but, like, no. It probably wouldn’t have even worked. Nick is doomed to do a leaf impression for the rest of her life. 

“What are you gonna get?” Harry asks Nick. 

“Uh, whatever the special is, probably,” Nick says, because she doesn’t have the mental capacity to run over exactly how she’s going to tell Harry she loves her _and_ decide what the fuck kind of Starbucks she wants. She probably shouldn’t even drink coffee in her current condition. 

“I’m kind of craving hot chocolate,” Harry muses, “but at the same time, do I want hot chocolate this early? I don’t want to fall asleep in class. I actually like this professor, it would be rude.”

“Get a cafe mocha,” Nick suggests.

Harry hums in consideration. “Probably will,” she says after a moment. Nick is very proud of that one. Her brain works! Miraculous. 

By the time they actually have their drinks (Nick’s is some weird, hard to pronounce thing that she doesn’t know the contents of and isn’t really looking forward to drinking), Nick is fit to fall to pieces in the middle of Starbucks. She’s going to explode, she thinks, and leave her body parts strewn about for Harry to pick up. It would be very typical of her.

Harry leads Nick over to a table by the window and sits down. Nick copies her and tries to remember what it was she was going to say. It had sounded very eloquent in her head, she remembers that much. Puppy had barked when she practiced it on her, so she’d taken that as approval. She can’t quite recall anymore.

Harry is carefully peeling the plastic lid off her coffee cup, pushing it to the centre of the table and licking whipped cream from the inside of the lid, and Nick hates everything from her stupid deep purple fingernails to her stupid hair falling in her eyes to her stupid little routines with her drinks. She can’t do it anymore. 

“I love you,” Nick blurts out, and Harry drops the lid on the table.

Oops. Nick had been going to lead into that a little better. Hey, everything is really still now. Weird.

Harry is smiling at her just like she always does, but it’s a different smile. This, Nick thinks in wonder, is the smile Harry gets when someone she loves says they love her back. It illuminates everything. Nick feels like a supernova. 

“I know you do, babe,” Harry says, picking the lid back up and snapping it onto her cup. 

“Well, fuck you,” Nick says. “I need a nap.”

“Shut up,” Harry says. “Drink your coffee.” 

“I don’t know about that. I don’t know what’s in this.” 

Harry screws up her nose. “Hold on, then, gotta do something first. C’mere.” She reaches across the table and grabs at Nick’s jacket lapel, only Nick has already gotten the picture (there goes her miraculous brain again, she’s so on a roll this morning) and is leaning in to kiss her over the table.

“There,” Harry says when they break apart. Nick feels a little lightheaded and a lot glad that Harry ended that after like five seconds, or else they might be on the floor in the Starbucks for entirely not explode-y breakdown reasons. “Now I can try this.” She picks up Nick’s drink and sniffs it before taking a sip. “Kinda fruity,” she says. “Bit odd. Not terrible.”

“Really?” Nick asks, taking it from her and trying it. She nearly spits it out on the table. “Oh my God, that’s horrible. That’s so bad. Wow. Why did you let me do that.”

Harry just laughs at her. Nick mourns the fact that she decided to do this at a point in time where Harry has somewhere to be in, like, half an hour. (She’s going to blame Finchy for that, to be quite honest.) 

Speaking of somewhere to be. “You should probably leave for class,” Nick says, tapping her phone screen. Harry peers at it and sighs. 

“Walk me to class?” she asks. “I know it’s cold, and you should go to the shop, but--”

“No,” Nick says. “I haven’t got anywhere to be, don’t worry.” 

Harry smiles at her. Nick files it away (smile #16, the one she gets when she’s relieved and pleased at the same time). 

Nick throws her drink in the bin on the way out the door. “Now I have nothing warm to keep my hands from freezing,” she complains, and Harry takes her hand like it isn’t even a question. Nick could get used to this. She hadn’t even been angling for it. (She’d maybe been angling for it.)

“Hey,” she says. “I just had a thought. Was this, like, our first date? Since, like. I said I love you and all.”

Harry snorts. “No, this was not a date, Nick. We do this all the time. You’re going to have to do better to impress me, Grimshaw.”

Nick pouts. “You’re gonna get it now, Styles, I’m going to plan something stupid and extravagant and you’re going to hate every second of it.”

“As if,” Harry says. “You’re going to be there, aren’t you?” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Nick says. She’s probably blushing now. She’s gonna blame it on the cold. Grimshaws do not blush. “Don’t we have to work up to stupid embarrassing couple status?”

Harry shrugs. “That’s what we’ve been doing this whole time. You just needed to catch up.”


End file.
